Archive for the ‘AMC HMX’ tag

Spent yesterday down at Lou’s watching the engine get closer to completion. The big task yesterday was installing the timing chain and gears, a double-roller Cloyes set, and then the oil pump, a Melling OEM replacement. One tip for anybody building a 4.0L engine: consider the vehicle it’s going into. The Jeep and AMC passenger car oil pans, while interchangeable, are also radically different and take oil pump pickup tubes of different heights. The 4.0 (Jeep) and 258 (AMC passenger car) oil pumps, which both bolt to the same location, also have different pickup tube provisions. We had to mix and match pumps and pickup tubes and eventually made it work, but I should have bought a 258 oil pump instead of the 4.0L oil pump and just made my life easier.

By the end of the day, the stroker was looking pretty good. Just need a water pump, balancer and manifolds (and a couple coats of paint on the oil pan) and she’ll be ready to go.

Finally was able to get back in the garage over the weekend. Bronchitis, the cruise and then a week of temperatures right around zero kept me out of it the last month or so. Picked up right where I left off – grinding the rust from the underside of the body, priming the spots of bare metal, then hitting it with liberal doses of undercoating. Did just the center portion, from the area above the gas tank all the way forward to the firewall. Left the outboard sections for later, probably just before the bodywork stage. Wanted to focus on the center section for now because I don’t really want to take out the drivetrain, brake lines and fuel lines again.

Next up – running those brake and fuel lines and installing the gas tank.

With the dash repairs completed, Mattar came over this past weekend and helped me shove the dash and steering column back in the HMX. It’s amazing how many tweaks AMC made to the Spirit between 1979 (the dash) and 1982 (the body and interior wiring harness). Had to stop every five minutes to wire up another adaptor here and there. While I have the black plastic interior parts and the 1979 AMX seats, I’m going to hold off on installing them until I buy a new black carpet set and get the car painted.

That NOS 180 kph (110 mph) speedometer to go along with the rest of the NOS dash gauges. The AMX in 1979 came with a 90 mph speedometer while the rest of the AMC lineup had 85 mph speedometers. In Canada, though, where the NHTSA didn’t have a kung-fu grip on the automakers’ shorties, AMC could get away with much cooler speedometers.

You might have noticed the open space for the radio in the first picture. Eventually, I plan to install this excellent CB stereo I bought a couple years ago. I will be screaming “Eastbound and down! Eastbound and down!” on the channel of your choice.

With that finished, the next major task is to install the gas tank and fuel lines. Wanted to clean the rust scale from the underside of the body first, and after a Saturday morning of grinding, painting and rubbercoating, I had the underside looking pretty darn good. So good, in fact, that I’m going to hold off on installing the tank and lines until I undercoat the entire underside of the car.

It took an entire week and a half to remove everything from the HMX‘s engine bay. By the way, when I say everything, I mean everything – down to the battery tray, down to the rubber seal where the back of the hood meets the cowl, down to the brake lines.

Reeves said I could just scratch the paint before applying the Eastwood Extreme Chassis Black, so I only applied grinder to the rust spots, went around the rest of the bay with a wire brush, cleaned half a tree’s worth of pine needles from the cowl vent, used up another five cans of degreaser and sprayed until my lungs turned black like a coal miner.

Yes, I know I didn’t get the crossmember. I’m saving the suspension for another day. But like Redden always says when we go to Hooters – dark lighting and tight stockings make any girl look great.

Next, I had to figure out what to do with all the nuts and bolts and screws and other fasteners that I’d removed. My memory blows – I know this – so I needed some way to keep track of all the fasteners. Plus, I needed to keep them organized because the crackheads who owned this car previously used whatever hardware store detritus they had laying around, so I also had to figure out the correct fasteners from the incorrect ones.

Oh, and I’m too cheap to go out and buy those plastic bins with all the different compartments. So I came up with this:

Took a sheet of cardboard, poked holes in it, clustered together similar fasteners and scribbled notes around ‘em. Works fairly well so far, and a lot better than keeping them in a jar and guessing as to their purpose later.

Now I’ve got to clean ‘em all. Lentinello better set up his new sandblaster pretty soon.

Well, I’d had the T4 for the HMX project soaking in brake cleaner in an old fridge by the side of the garage for a couple weeks, just long enough to torque off the neighbor. Electrician came Friday to finally hook up the power to the garage (220 – just in case anybody wants to buy me a welder for Christmas), so with lights and some room inside the garage, I set about to scrubbing down the T4.

The Borg-Warner T4, for those of you who don’t know, is the four-speed, non-overdrive version of the T5. The Spirit actually used a T5 (non-World Class) from 1981 to 1983 (in fact, AMC used the T5 before Ford and Chevrolet). McGean and I have been talking about swapping in a Mustang World Class T5, which is essentially a bolt-in, so I have no idea why I went to all this trouble, except for the fact that I probably shed a good five pounds’ worth of sludge, I just haven’t bought a T5 yet and want a nice, clean transmission to bolt to my stroker engine. Oh, and I had nothing better to do with those five cans of brake cleaner.

Heather and I based our whole vacation on visiting Dayton for the AMO Nationals, held in Carillon Historical Park. A bit larger than last year’s nationals in Atlanta, but the closer to Kenosha, the bigger you’ll expect it to be.

Spotted Dean Hensinger’s Trans Am Javelin, which is in the current issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines. Tried to track down Jim Alexander, who was there along with several other AMC designers, but every time I went to his tent, he was out somewhere, probably autographing copies of the July issue of HMM – the one that included an article about T.E.A.M. racing. Even spoke with a Chad Quella from Virginia, who took inspiration from the first article about the HMX and built his own Spirit GT with a Renix-injected 4.0L six-cylinder. It’s pretty tough when the cars I’ve inspired are hitting the show field before mine.

Also spotted a Speed Spectacular Javelin on the show field:

At first, I thought it might have been Jeff Malacarne’s, the one he sent us pictures of a couple months ago. But he said he planned to have it done for the 2007 Nationals, not this year’s. This one, the No. 2 car that won the Speed Spectacular (Jeff’s is the No. 1 car), belongs to Rick and Deb Francis in Ohio, and has been finished for a few years now, but only this year made it to its first national event.

Lot of other cool cars showed up. Look for coverage in a future issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.

Took it easy this weekend, but did get some work done on the projects. Connected the bed lights and hooked up the fuel filler on the pickup. I almost forgot how enjoyable it is to work on something with so much space underneath. It’s now ready for inspection and insurance. Then looked all around the HMX‘s firewall for where the hydraulic clutch master is supposed to mount. Doesn’t seem to be where the mechanical linkage was, so now I’m hitting the forums for info. Got rid of a couple big parts out of the garage. It’s nice to move around in there, but in actuality, it’s so I have room for more parts.